With the state drowning in red ink and the Legislature facing a seemingly endless gridlock, political reformers and business officials want to call a state constitutional convention to redraw the way government works in California.

"Our premise is that California is broken," said Jim Wunderman, a leader of the effort and president of the Bay Area Council, which represents key businesses in the region. "That part is no longer debatable. The question now is 'How do we fix it?' "

Wunderman picked up the idea for a constitutional convention from a frustrated legislator during last summer's long-running state budget battle. When he proposed the plan in a Chronicle opinion piece in August, he was shocked by the number of people who agreed that something drastic had to be done.

"Everyone doesn't agree on a solution, but everyone is upset and scared about the way things are now," Wunderman said in a presentation to a small group at the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association last week. "But if this is a bad idea, what's a better one?"

A constitutional convention is the nuclear option in the world of government reform. In theory, delegates to a convention could agree to change virtually anything in the current state Constitution, putting their proposals on the statewide ballot for the voters to decide.

Wunderman is convinced that a new convention could be limited in scope, with voters agreeing in advance on a list of issues to be covered. Broad topics such as budget reform, election reform, state and local fiscal relations and government oversight could be on the list for the delegates to debate, with other issues off limits.

The lack of limits is one reason legislators have been reluctant to call conventions in the past, said Joel Fox, a former aide to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger who now edits the Fox and Hounds political blog.

"Neither side will trust the other side," he said. "Each is concerned that the other side will put their favorite issues in front of the convention, where anything could happen."

Two-thirds majority problem

One of the problems convention supporters face is the Constitution itself. The only way a new convention now can be called is if two-thirds of the Legislature agrees to put it on the ballot and a majority of the voters approve. The Legislature then has to "provide" for a convention within six months.

The same legislators who can't get two-thirds agreement on a budget are unlikely to come together to call a convention that could rewrite the rules of state government, Wunderman said.

That's why advocates want to place their own constitutional amendment on the ballot, possibly as soon as June 2010, to allow California citizens to bypass the Legislature and call their own convention. The same ballot would include another initiative asking voters to actually call the convention.

"Our lawyers have told us that if we do this we'll get sued and that we'll win," said John Grubb, a spokesman for the Bay Area Council.

While 14 states automatically ask voters every 10 to 20 years whether to authorize a constitutional convention, it's only been done twice in California, in 1849 and 1878. The Legislature authorized a convention in 1933, but then refused to convene it.

Legislators have preferred to deal with constitutional change by forming revision commissions, most recently in 1964 and again in 1994. Over a period of 12 years, the first commission recommended several changes to the Constitution, which cut the overstuffed document in half. But when the 1994 commission put together its own set of recommended changes two years later, the Legislature refused to put any of them on the ballot.

Doubters remain

With a convention, the delegates themselves would decide what to put on the ballot, with the Legislature having no power to block them. Once on the ballot, a straight majority vote would decide whether each measure was approved.

Even among those favoring reform, not everyone is convinced a constitutional convention is the right way to go.

"People are frustrated and recognize the need for change," said Jim Mayer, executive director of California Forward, a bipartisan governmental reform group. "But is (a convention) the right tool?"

Time is one of the big problems with a convention. Even if the proposal gets on the ballot next year, it will take time to elect a statewide group of delegates, put together the proposals, provide expert support and then debate the issues and prepare the ballot measures. It likely would be years before Californians would vote on any proposed changes.

Yet more hurdles

Getting the reform plan from the convention to the ballot isn't the end of the process, either. The measures then have to face the same type of attacks from the same partisans, interest groups and other opponents as any other ballot measure.

"Obviously, there's a lot of heavy lifting to have a constitutional convention," Wunderman said.

But Wunderman is gathering allies and forcing state officials to take the convention idea seriously. Two bills, SCR 3 by Mark DeSaulnier, D-Concord, and ACR 1 by Sam Blakeslee, R-San Luis Obispo, have been introduced, calling for the Legislature to place a vote on a convention on the next statewide ballot.

"People are afraid of the unknown," Wunderman said. "But the thing that's scariest of all is the status quo."